LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 726 964 9 



HoUinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



IBS? 



ESTHETICS 



IS 



COLLEGIATE EDTJCATI 



5 By GEORGE Fj^COMEOKT, A.M., 

PROFESSOR IN ALLEGHENY COLLEGE, MRA.DVILLE, PA.., AND f!ORRF-SPONDING MEMBE 
THE IN8TITUT0 ARCHEOLOGICO DI ROMA. 



6'^?n 



wKr^i^::. •;• #.^ 





r 




1 



4- 



w 



ESTHETICS 



IN 



COLLEGIATE EDUCATIOK 




FBOM THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW, OCTOBER, 1867. 



The attention of the leading thinkers of our country is at 
the present time drawn in an unusual degree to the reforming 
or the remodeling of the higher departments of our educational 
system. More changes will probably be introduced into this 
system during the next twenty-five years than within a century 



^ 



^ 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 573 

thereafter. The formation or transition period in the devel- 
opment of any element of culture or civilization necessarily 
determines its future. The present is therefore a most critical 
time in the history of American education. 

In order to approach our subject intelligently it will be 
necessary, first, to throw a hasty glance at the proper method 
for the classification or gradation of our schools, and then to 
take a general survey of the subjects proper for collegiate 
study. We must fix before our minds a purely ideal system 
of education ; a system organized as though we had a taJmla 
rasa^ with opportunity and means to arrange everything 
exactly as this system may require. Next, we must be prac- 
tical, and see what steps can be taken now to prepare the way 
for the final introduction of this ideal system in the place of 
the one at present in vogue, and which has been almost entirely 
the child of circumstances; or for the incorporation of such 
features of this ideal system as may be feasible in the different 
existing institutions of learning in the country. 

In speaking of the classification or gradation of schools, let 
us begin by clearly defining our terms. Let us not speak of 
"university reform" when we mean "college reform," un- 
less we intend, in a rigid discussion, to adopt a popular use 
of words, and to consider college and university as syno- 
nyms. On the continent of Europe the term university means 
a post-graduate or a post-collegiate institution. In England 
the term university, as applied to Oxford or Cambridge, means 
but little more than a collection of many colleges of nearly 
equal grade, though the University of London is slowly making 
its way to the ground occupied by the universities on the con- 
tinent. In America we practically use the words college and 
university as convertible terms. Passing by that large num- 
ber of institutions in the West which have charters covering 
all possible fields of instruction, but which are in reality but 
mere academies, and speaking of our oldest and best institu- 
tions of learning, we mean by a college or a universitya school 
of collegiate grade in which the college is the only, or else by 
far the dominant, feature, but which has begun, or is looking 
with longing eyes to the time when it may begin, to append 
technical or professional schools to the parent and dominant 
school, the college. Educators in Germany, England, and 



1 



574 Esthetics in Collegiate Education. [October, 

America would have, therefore, to convert thejr terms before 
they could understand each other with reference to university- 
reform . 

There seems but one way to get out of this confusion of 
terms. We must change the organization of our educational 
system. Our schools should be divided into four grades. 
These should commence with the child learning his alphabet, 
and terminate with the highest professional instruction the age 
can give. The lines of demarkation between the grades should 
be so drawn as to give natural divisions and gradations in the 
matter and method of instruction for those designing to finish 
an entire curriculum, and at the same time furnish con- 
venient stopping places for those who cannot go on to the 
higher grades. These four grades we will term the primary^ 
the academic^ the collegiate^ and the university. The methods 
of instruction to be adopted, the management of the scholars, 
and the entire organization and individual corporate life of 
these four grades of schools are so different and distinct, that 
they cannot be united without doing great injury to each of 
any two grades that may be brought together in the same 
school. 

JiTeither of the four grades will, therefore, assume the name 
nor do the work of any of the others. The primary and aca- 
demic students are equally injured by joining a primary 
"A B C'^ department to an academy. A preparatory 
department is no more of a nuisance to a college than it is an 
injury to the preparatory students, who ought to be in an 
academy till they are ready to enter the college classes. The 
severe and just censures made by eastern institutions upon the 
schools of the West, that they are colleges in name but often 
are merely mediocre academies in fact, are met by the equally 
just and severe censures by European educators upon all of 
our American universities, which are so often but mediocre 
colleges. Unless this incongruity can be removed, educators 
in America will come to accept the opinion so universally held 
in Europe, that the high education of our country must always 
be inferior to that of the old world. 

It would be as difficult to get the University of Berlin, Paris, 
Munich, or Naples to make a gymnasium its chief feature, or 
to connect a gymnasium with it in any manner whatever, as it 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 575 

would be to ^get Tale or Amherst College, or Harvard, 
Brown, or the Wesley an University, to make an academy 
its chief feature, or to add an academy to the college on any 
condition whatever. The work, regimen, and individuality 
of an academy are recognized to be distinct from those 
of a college. Equally distinct are those of a college and a 
university. 

An examination of the catalogues of the colleges of the 
country shows that wherever there is a professor of unusual 
age, character, influence, or pertinacity, his branch is developed 
to a disproportionate predominance over the other departments, 
and beyond the true scope of a college. In nearly all colleges 
important branches of a liberal education are greatly neglected 
or are omitted entirely. 

But the greatest evil of our system, or rather of our lack of 
intelligent system, is that every one of the two hundred and 
more colleges in America are trying, and some have already 
succeeded, in adding university departments. There are thus 
tacked to the different colleges of America enough fragments 
of a university to form, if united and organized on a judicious 
plan, at least one good university, that would compete honor- 
ably with any in the old world. It needs but a glance at the 
future to see, that within the coming quarter of a centmy 
many millions of dollars will be spent in aggravating this evil, 
in thus attaching to colleges fragments of a university. Much 
more will thus be spent than would be required to found a 
university equal in scope to that in Berlin, with its two hund- 
red professors, representing every department of human learn- 
ing ; and, after all, we will have but a multitude of scattered 
fragments of a university, some departments of instruction 
being repeated twenty times, and others not being represented 
at all. After all, our young men will have to go abroad for 
that instruction which, under a better system, and without the 
outlay of a dollar more, might be given them in our own land. 
After all, America will occupy but a provincial relation to 
the capitals of learning in the old world. The unbounded 
resources of our country, and the great enterprise and gener- 
osity of our people, will enable us to carry on this guerrilla 
warfare for many years, and at the outlay of many millions of 
dollars. Still our pertinacity and elastic adaptability to newly- 



d 



576 Esthetics in Collegiate Education. [October, 

felt wants are guarantees also that we will eventually see the 
necessity of having post-graduate universities, organized as 
separately from the colleges as the colleges are from the acad- 
emies. But it is painful to think of the time that will be lost 
and the money that will be wasted in experiments which 
every intelligent observer of educational movements must see 
beforehand will be abortive. 

But it will be necessary to prolong the portico to our house 
a little more before entering into the building itself 

" Possession makes nine points in law." In any land or in any 
age, those studies that occupy the ground in a system of edu- 
cation have a great advantage over new claimants for admis- 
sion. Their fruits are tangible, are before the eyes of all. 
The fact that a different course, in a land five thousand miles 
away, or two thousand years ago, also produced great, in some 
respects superior, results is very intangible. It may or it may 
not be so. And if the new comer has never been tested, what- 
ever may be the fruit it might produce it will be rejected. In 
education, as in medicine, we dislike experiment. The difficul- 
ties attending a change also often cause it to be rejected even 
when it is really desired. 

It would-be imprudent, indeed, to make any change without 
the greatest caution. Antiquity, or distance, is not of itself 
any proof of excellence. The ancient distaff is not better than 
the modern spinning jenny or the sewing machine. The camels 
of the Orient, though used by the patriarch Abraham, or the 
merchants of Palmyra, are not better than the locomotive. So 
methods of instruction, followed by the priests of ancient 
Egypt, in classical Greece, or to-day in vogue in England, 
France, or Germany, are not, for their antiquity or geograph- 
ical distance, better than those existing in America. 

On the other hand, not every steam-plow or cigar-shaped 
steamer is to be adopted because it is new or novel : neither 
should every fanciful system of education that is proposed. In 
material and spiritual matters alike, antiquity or newness, 
distance or nearness, are of themselves no criterion whatever 
as to whether anything is good or bad. But everything, old 
or new, native or foreign, must be judged by its own intrinsic 
merits. If theoretical conclusions can be fortified by expe- 
rience in past history or in other lands, it will aid as much in 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 57T 

forming intelligent opinions. Innovations must, however, be 
sometimes introduced, for which past history gives us no ex- 
perience. It is, indeed, only by these that any progress has 
ever been made. Resisting all change, the tribes of Arabia 
have moved around in the monotonous, eddying circles of 
patriarchal life, while their neighbors, the nations of southern 
and western Europe, liave launched out and been borne along 
on the stream of civilization. 

We will now throw a hasty glance at the history of colle- 
giate education in America, and the changes it has undergone. 
The colleges established in New England during colonial times 
have stamped the character of all American colleges. They 
were modeled, essentially, after the type of the English colleges 
of that day. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were 
originally organized on the same plan as those of continental 
Europe. All European universities had their college or char- 
ity halls for giving lodging and board to poor students. Endow- 
ments were afterward left to support tutors, also, for these 
charity students. The Reformation, and other political and 
social upheavals, overthrew the universities in England, except 
in their names and in some of the forms of their organization. 
The halls or colleges survived these upheavals,, and their 
endowments increased in number and value. And thus these 
halls or colleges, which were laid aside altogether on the con- 
tinent two centuries ago, in England quite supplanted the 
original university system. On the continent gymnasiums 
were established to feed the universities, and primary schools 
to feed the gymnasiums, thus giving a system of graded schools, 
from the most elementary to the university course — called with 
us the post-graduate course. At the end of the seventeenth 
and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, when our 
American colleges were established upon the then-existing 
model of the colleges which are clustered in Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, those colleges hardly equaled our academies or semin- 
aries of to-day in the extent or rigor of their courses of 
study. The English colleges have never approximated the 
universities on the continent ; and they still retain essentially 
their medieval course of study and organization, except that 
they are attended now by the nobility, instead of by charity 
students. 



578 Esthetics in Collegiate Edutatinn, [October, 

Our early American colleges were thus modeled after those 
of England, and that at a time in their history when they 
were a hundred and fifty years behind those of continental 
Europe, both in the scope and character of the instruction 
given. At that period the renaissance was at its height. All 
native or modern literature, art, or philosophy was tabooed as 
vulgar and barbarous. Everything that came from Greece or 
Rome was good: everything that did not was bad. A 
universal classicism pervaded every department of civilization. 
St. Paul's Cathedral was a vast Roman temple. Milton's 
Paradise Lost has the same classical stamp. In the colleges, 
the whole curriculum of studies consisted of Latin, Greek, 
Mathematics, a smattering of scholastic philosophy .and bar- 
barous logic, and enough Hebrew to enable the student of 
theology to tell the meaning of Golgotha. These studies 
became the basis of our American academies and colleges, and 
have remained so till this day. 

Since that time Linnaeus has created the science of botany ; 
Werner, that of geology ; Black and others, that of chemistry ; 
Blackstone, that of civil law ; Y^ttel, that of international 
law; Mosheim, that of Church history ; Winckelmann, that of 
classical archaeology ; Boeck^ that of classical philology ; Grimnij 
the philology of the Teutonic languages ; Diez, that of the 
romance languages ; Craik and Marsh, that of the English 
language ; Bopp, that of comparative language ; Piper, that of 
Christian archaeology; Ritter, that of comparative geography; 
Schnaser and Kugler, that of art-history; Yischer, that of 
esthetics. 

With this prolific growth of studies, that bear directly upon 
our immediate daily life, that tend to our highest culture for 
the present, and to the most safe moulding of our civilization 
in the future ; in what degree might we be justified in looking 
for a corresponding modification of Our sj^stem of instruction, 
especially in a land like America, where every college stands 
upon its own basis, absolutely free from that centralization of 
power, official dependency, and guvernment control, that so 
hamper the gymnasiums and universities of Europe? In no 
country in the world has there been a more conservative ad- 
herence to methods of study originally adopted, than in this 
free America. In the study even of the classical languages 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 579 

we generally follow a method and use a class of grammars 
and text-books which were laid aside in Germany as antiquated 
a generation ago. Still, in spite of this strong conservative 
spirit — when not carried to excess, one of the greatest safe- 
guards of a free people — important changes have been in- 
troduced into many of our academies and colleges. With us 
they have begun, like all changes in republics, in the lower 
strata, and have worked upward, instead of working from 
above downward, as in Europe. The studies of intellectual 
and moral science, history, political economy, international, 
constitutional, and municipal law, and of the natural sciences 
in general, are quite universally pursued, though in a very 
rudimentary manner. The result is, that, while the gym- 
nasiums of Germany produce scholars beyond comparison 
more rigidly trained, our American colleges give a more 
general culture, and make the more mature and independent 
thinkers. 

In Germany, the representative land of European education, 
as with us, many new studies are clamoring for admittance to 
the gymnasiums and colleges. Most of them will continue 
clamoring until they are admitted, notwithstanding that in 
both lands the curriculums are already overcrowded. This 
will be accomplished by the same method that attended the 
contest of the natural sciences for admittance, by first making 
the new studies elective, and then by making additional 
courses of study. Many studies now in the collegiate course 
will be thrown back into the preparatory or academic course ; 
others will be thrown forward to their true place in the 
university. There will be thus preserved that indispensable 
feature to a good collegiate system of study, a general uni- 
formity in the method and scope of instruction ; and at the 
same time a certain freedom will be allowed to the taste and 
choice of the individual student, even before he enters upon 
his professional studies at the university. 

For a long time a dual warfare was carried on between the 
languages and mathematics for supremacy in education. The 
natural sciences have entered the arena, and the combat has 
become a triangular one. But a new rival is pressing its way 
forward, and will draw upon itself the swords of all three of 
the present valiant warriors. 



580 Esthetics in Collegiate Education, [October, 

We will first look at tlie subject from a purely philosophical 
standpoint. Man is a twofold being. He is lody and spirit.* 
Each of these parts of his double nature is governed by its 
own laws, is capable of its own peculiar development, and has 
its own range of activity. Leaving aside, then, the physical 
part of man, and passing by the classification of the faculties 
of the spirit, all of which are called into activity in different 
degrees in every study, we may consider the ranges of spiritual 
activity from three standpoints ; or they may be measured, so 
to speak, like a cube by its three co-ordinates, a?, y, and s, 
that is, with reference to their subject-matter, their method, or 
their quality. 

The three great classes of subject-matter are theology^ or a 
knowledge of deity ; anthropology^ or a knowledge of human- 
ity ; and cosmology^ or a knowledge of the material universe. 

The three great methods are the theoretical^ the historical^ 
and the practical. 

The third plan of classification considers the three great 
qualities that pervade every being, created or uncreated, in 
the universe — the good^ the true^ and the beautiful. 

Each of these three grand plans of classification is exhaust- 
ive. Either must be considered with reference to the other 
two. And in each the parts so overlap and intertwine, that 
an accurate and absolute drawing of dividing lines is im- 
possible. The last one is the most available and the most 
natural as a basis for classifying the studies in a system of 
education. 

In our present system the first two elements, the good and 
the true, are strongly though not symmetrically represented. 
The good is developed in the instruction in moral science that 
is given in all of our academies and colleges, in the the- 
ological seminaries, by the religious press, by the pulpit, the 
Sabbath-school, and other ecclesiastical institutions. 

The true^ meaning thereby, of course, the foundation of all 
knowledge, or of science taken in its broadest sense, is brought 
forward in the instruction in the sciences that is given in our 
schools, primary, academic^ collegiate, and technical or pro- 

* The common expression that mon has a threefold nature— moral, physical, 
and intellectual — is based upon too crude an examination of the attributes of 
humanity to require a lengthy criticism. 

2 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education, 581 

fessional; in the cabinets and museums of our schools and 
-cities; in the scientific journals and books of the day; 
and in the scientific associations that exist in many of our 
leading cities. 

But what provision is made in our existing system of 
education in America to open the soul to that third world 
within and without us — to the world of beauty ? What oppor- 
tunity 'do our colleges afibrd to enable their students to de- 
velop those noble aspirations for the beautiful, innate in every 
human breast; to give form to plans or projections of works 
of art that may dimly float in their minds ; to enable them to 
pass an intelligent criticism upon a work of art or, indeed, 
<to have one for themselves, in the thousands of cases where 
they will be called upon to decide upon works of art, whether 
they are qualified to do so or not ? In most of our colleges 
none at all ; in a few, the principles of criticism are slightly 
taught; in fewer still is practical instruction given; and in 
none whatever have the historj^ of the fine arts and their 
relation to the general history of civilization been taught. 
This is a radical fault, not only in our collegiate but in our 
primary and academic schools, that the esthetic element is so 
completely ignored in instruction. 

Having thus established that in an ideal system of education 
the moral, the scientific, and the esthetic should have equal 
prominence, we will proceed to consider briefly the objects of 
esthetic culture, and how far they can he accomplished in the 
college course of study. 

One of the most important objects to be secured is the 
development of native artists. America, this giant among 
nations, with a territory larger and richer than that of all 
Europe ; with a population boasting loudly their superiority 
in genius and enterprise over the inhabitants of any other 
land ; America, whose common schools are the best in the 
world ; which publishes more newspapers, sustains more mis- 
sionaries, has built more railroads and telegraphs than any 
other nation ; whose appliances and inventions for saving 
labor, as printing presses, mowing, reaping, and sewing ma- 
chines, are penetrating every civilized land ; whose mammoth 
cannon and invulnerable ships of war are the wonder and the 
fear of the world; America, where for two hundred and fifty 



582 Esthetics in Collegiate Education. [October, 

yeai's, planted by the most enterprising sons of the old world, 
there has been growing up a system of government, of social 
order, and of Christian civilization, which we proudly and con- 
tinually boast is the best the world has ever seen, has not a 
single school where a painter, sculptor, architect, or musician 
can be educated. While Germany, with one twelfth of our 
territory, with a poor soil, with a population impoverished 
and groaning under the devastations of the thirty years', the 
seven years', and the Napoleonic wars, and weakened by the 
constant drain upon the vital forces of the country to be ready 
for future contests, has eleven academies of the fine arts in 
general, four conservatories of music, and eight academies 
of architecture. Nearly all of the twenty-two universities 
of Germany have professors of esthetics and history of the 
fine arts, over thirty courses of lectures being given annually 
in these branches in the single University of Berlin. In nearly 
all of the more than five hundred gymnasiums and technical 
schools of that country drawing is taught systematically. 

For anything above the merest rudiments and fragmentary 
instruction in any branch of the fine arts, our students must 
go to Europe. By a strange inconsistency, our American 
travelers. Christian and unchristian, ministers, lawyers, and 
merchants, will walk, lost in wonder and admiration, among 
the ruins of the monuments of Thebes, Athens, Rome, and the 
Alhambra; will stand in awe before the Cathedrals of Milan, 
Strasbourg or Kouen, the Notre-Dame, the Westminster or 
Melrose Abbey ; will ramble with delight through the galleries 
of the Vatican, of the Louvre, of Florence, Berlin, Munich or 
London ; will listen enchanted to the music of voice and in- 
strument in Germany and Italy : but when they return to 
America, where commerce is worshiped, where business has 
her temples, and every man brings his sacrifice to the altar of 
wealth, they will lift neither hand nor voice to aid a similar 
development of art in their own land. If they see a young 
man studying to be a professional artist — a musician, painter, 
or sculptor — they will either remonstrate with him, or will in 
their hearts pity him for being such a fool as to throw away 
his time and talents upon such a trivial occupation ; '' much 
better be a lawyer, merchant, engineer, chemist, manufacturer, 
or shoemaker I " 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education, 583 

But we might as well get Germans and Italians to write our 
hymns as to make our tunes and build our churches ; to write 
our patriotic songs as to make our patriotic statues. If we wish 
ever to have an art expressive of our own national, social, or 
religious life, it will only be found to be possible by growing on 
our own soil, and by being cultivated by our own hands. 

But it will be said, and with truth, "Few, if any, of our 
students in college will become artists," and "why then 
should they study art % " 

How many of those who study astronomy, chemistry, cr 
international law become astronomers, chemists, or embas- 
sadors to foreign courts ? Shall none study Latin, Greek, 
geometry, or geology but those who will be professors of these 
sciences? Shall none but doctors understand physiology; 
none but lawyers tod merchants, the principles and forms of 
business ; none but preachers, the principles of morality ; and 
none hut artists^ the laws of taste ? 

On the contrary, for a community to be thrifty, the prin- 
ciples of social and political economy must be understood and 
practiced by that community ; to be healthy, they must know 
and obey the laws of hygiene ; to be virtuous, they must 
know and practice the principles of religion and morality. 
These must be so engrafted and ingrown as to become a part 
of the daily life — a part of the very being, of the existence — of a 
community. So, especially in a republic like ours, where 
every man has his house, where every parlor has its piano, 
every church its organ, every city its band ; where civilization 
is spreading rapidly over our boundless prairies and golden 
sierras, building up, as if by magic, cities in a day and villages 
in a night ; where in the longer settled parts, the log-cabin is 
being replaced by the stately mansion, the humble meeting- 
house by the massive stone church with lofty spire and pealing 
organ, the old stage house by the noisy railroad depot and the 
city-like hotel, a good art is only possible where there exists a 
generally diffused and highly cultivated taste. 

The graduates of our colleges are to be, more than any other 
persons, the moulders, the directors, the cultivators of this taste. 
They are to be our editors — and will praise, condemn, or 
criticise in the columns of their journals every work of art 
that appears. They are to be our orators — in the pulpit, in the 



584: Esthetics in Collegiate Education. [October, 

lecture-room, on the rostrum, at the bar, and in the halls of 
legislation, having thus that important branch of the fine arts, 
eloquence, almost entirely in their hands. As choristers, 
directors of musical associations, and pastors, they will largely 
direct the future of our social, secular, and religious music. 
Rising to prominence in every department of life, they are 
to act as commissioners or trustees in the erection of buildings 
for schools, academies, colleges, universities, churches, hos- 
pitals for the sick, private or state charitable institutions for 
the blind, deaf and dumb, and insane. On behalf of the com- 
monwealth, they are to be charged with the erection of 
edifices for the county, state, and nation. They are to decide 
upon the adorning of these buildings with paintings and 
statuary, and upon the tasteful laying out of parks and other 
public grounds. As enterprising and %uccessful men of 
business, they are to decide upon the architectural style of 
their own warehouses, . stores, factories, hotels, station-houses 
and other buildings connected with railroads and other cor- 
porate bodies. First and foremost in every entei-prise, they 
w^ill especially need all the qualifications for the performance 
of their various duties. As many of these duties will thus 
require of them a high esthetic culture this should be secured 
to them in their college course, for after they enter upon their 
professional life they do not and they cannot get it. 

But we are a very practical people ; Europeans call us very 
material. We will look a moment at the material advantaires 
to be derived from a study of the fine arts. We will, of course, 
exclude the professional study of art, and speak only of some 
of the most manifest advantages that persons, other than artists, 
will derive from having both a knowledge of the general prin- 
ciples of art, and also a moderate skill in the use of the pencil and 
brush. The surveyor, machinist, landscape-gardener, and me- 
chanic will find the few hours and dollars spent in learning the 
rudiments of drawing and design to be the cheapest and most 
profitable investment they can make. To the topographical 
engineer, the inventor, and the architect, a knowledge of 
mathematical drafting is of course indispensable. By having 
a skillful use of the pencil, the man of science can record his 
discoveries better than any artist to whom he may communi- 
cate his ideas. The professor in every branch of science 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 5S5 

can illustrate his instruction with a few lines on the black- 
board better than by a long circumlocution of words. The 
traveler, with a few strokes of the pencil, can catch the prom- 
inent points of a landscape, a building, a statue, or a paint- 
ing, and thus make his heart beat with joy at the memory of 
his travels years after his return to his home. The minister 
of the Gospel, with a knowledge of design, can plan a church 
far more fitting to its purpose than can the architect by 
business profession, who is often an unbeliever, and almost 
always mercantile in his views. Thus did the priests of Egypt. 
And they developed their system of heathen temple architect- 
ure far more perfectly than that of Greece or Kome. So did 
the priests and monks in the middle ages, and under their 
hands was developed the Romanesque or early Gothic, the most 
perfect style of Clftistian architecture the world has yet seen. 
It is as appropriate for the minister to design churches for the 
people to worship in as for him to write hymns for the people 
to sing, or tunes to sing the hymns by. But, as but few 
ministers have genius for composing music or poetry, so also 
but few will develop a talent for architecture. 

But there are other considerations, higher, more noble, more 
inspiring, than any relations of time or of this world, to which 
all of these are subsidiary and subservient. A peasant 
selected by his king to serve in the royal palace is little an- 
noyed by the meager life of his humble cottage, but his heart 
is full of the dignity of his new oflSce, and he gives himself up 
to preparation to appear properly before his monarch and to 
there perform the duties of his office acceptably. Pilgrims to 
a land 

** Whose glories shine so bright, no mortal eye can bear the sight," 

where we " shall see the king in his beautj^," and serve around 
his throne, the circumstances of our life here below are of small 
consideration in comparison to the glories we shall see when 
" mortality has put on immortality," and we shall have entered 
upon the happiness and the occupations of our eternal existence. 
Enoch, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and Edwards entered doubtless 
immediately upon a higher state of life in heaven than the 
thief on the cross, or any other person who repented at the 
eleventh hour. The highly cultivated or deeply learned Chris- 
tian philosopher or scientist, as Isaac Newton, Thomas Dick, 



686 Esthetics in Collegiate Education, [October, 

or Bishop Berkeley, will enter upon a higher state of spiritual 
existence than should they die in infancy, or with dwarfed in- 
tellects. So the Christian artist, as Giotto, Fra Angelico, 
Milton, Handel, or Mozart, is more prepared to appreciate the 
music of the heavenly hosts, the beauty and the glory of the 
new Jerusalem, than should he die in infancy, or should his 
sensibilities be obtuse or uncultivated. 

And more — if we as true Christians can need such a motive, 
can need to be whipped to duty — when we are called to give 
an account of our stewardship, the recording angel will not 
forget to ask whether we have developed all, or buried some of 
the faculties with which the Creator has endowed us. 

Having thus touched upon some of the advantages, the 
enjoyments, and the duties of a symmetrical development of 
our spiritual nature — of our moral, scientific, and esthetic fac- 
ulties alike — let us glance hastily at the means by which this, 
with us, so much neglected esthetic culture is to be obtained. 
It is to be acquired by the same method as moral or scientific 
culture, by appropriate education and development. 

In making a comparative survey of the fine arts in America, 
and using this word in its broadest sense, we find that oratory 
far overtops the other arts, both in the attention given it in 
our schools, and in the successful application of it. No Euro- 
pean country can compare with America to-day in the number 
and excellence of its orators in the pulpit and on the forum. 
Belle-lettres literature is taught extensively ; that of our own 
country and England merely is well appreciated ; but we cannot 
boast of many good writers of poetry or romance. Music is 
taught in many schools, and, of a low order, it is widely diff'used 
throughout all classes of society. We have no first-class 
American composers, nor are oratorios either sung or appreci- 
ated much, even in our large cities. All of our colleges should 
have professorships of oratory, belles-lettres, and music. These 
should be taught historically, theoretically, and practically. 

But it is in the formative and applied arts, as painting, sculp- 
ture, and architecture, that the deficiency in our system of 
education is the most flagrant ; and it is more especially witli 
reference to these that we wish to treat. It is true that in 
many of our public and private schools, drawing and painting 
are taught. 13ut how are they taught i In the most cureory, 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education, 587 

mechanical, and unartistic way ; not receiving one quarter of 
the time given to arithmetic, grammar, or any other element- 
ary study ; being pushed into any spare hour that the student 
who has a special love for art can find; ranked as "orna- 
mental," in distinction from the solid or serious studies ; and 
considered by a large majority of teachers, parents, and patrons 
as an unimportant, if not a trivial and frivolous, or indeed a 
vain and noxious appendage to the education of a person of 
dignity of character. Still the importance of the fact is not 
to be underrated, that drawing and painting are taught in any 
manner in our primary schools and academies. Having secured 
a foothold, they will gain ground with the advancing public 
taste. As those who are now in the primary schools and the 
academies enter college, they will wish to continue their 
studies on a higher basis. Thus there will be created a demand 
for professorships, and the demand will be supplied. 

Instruction in esthetics and the fine arts, to be systematic, 
should be of three kinds, theoretical, practical, and historical. 
The theoretical will include the general science of esthetics, or 
the philosophy of the beautiful ; its place in a system of phi- 
losophy ; the classification, methods, scope, spirit, and mutual 
relations of the different fine arts, as music, poetry, oratory, 
painting, sculpture, architecture ; and of the applied arts, as 
landscape gardening, mechanical and topographical drawing, 
the ornamentation of carpets, wall paper, furniture, machinery, 
dress, and everything that can receive life, grace, and beauty 
from the hand of art. 

From a lack of thorough instruction in preparatory schools, 
elementary instruction will have to be given in the practical 
use of the pencil and the brush ; also in the application of 
mathematics to drawing, in isometrical and linear perspective, 
and in architectural, mechanical, and topographical drawing. 

To the general scholar, to the man of culture, the study of 
the great intellectual forces that have moulded the civilization 
of the world, is one of the greatest interest and importance. 
With such, the historical study of the development, the rise, 
perfection, and decadence of the fine arts in the different 
nations and ages of the world, opens the mind to the most 
glorious as well as the most sad epochs of human greatness 
and weakness. Without a knowledge of this element in 



I _ 



588 Esthetics in Collegiate Education. [October, 

human history, much of history must be blank, more must be 
enigmatical, and all is incomplete. Egypt without her temples, 
tombs, and pyramids ; Athens without the Parthenon, the 
Erechtheum, the Propyleum, the temples of Theseus and 
Jupiter ; Kome without the Capitol, the Coliseum, the baths, 
the temples, and the tombs; Pompeii without its statuary 
and paintings ; Constantinople without the Santa Sophia, the 
cisterns, the hippodrome, and the mosques ; Florence without 
its cathedral, city-hall, churches, statuary, paintings, and pal- 
aces ; 'Cologne without its cathedral and Romanesque churches ; 
Venice without its St. Mark's Church and tower, ducal palace, 
library building, marble palaces, and brilliant paintings ; in 
fact, any and all historic countries and cities, without their 
monuments of art, would be stripped of a great portion of the 
strange charm that draws to them travelers from all lands. 
"We cry out against the destruction of works of art by the Yan- 
dals. How much less would the immeasurably greater portion 
of the men of learning in America know of the works of 
ancient art, the spirit that gave them birth, the circumstances 
of their creation, and their influence upon the art of succeed- 
ing ages, had the Yandals destroyed every work of classical 
architecture, sculpture, and painting, than they do now ? 

A distinguished member of the New York bar, a graduate 
of a college in New England that claims to be the best in 
America, while in Italy lately, declared that he had never 
heard of Leonardo da Yinci, and by the way he talked it was 
demonstrated that he certainly never had, though his German 
and Italian companions could hardly believe their ears. The 
death of Cornelius, the patriarch of modern painting, fell thi& 
year like a cloud of darkness upon cultivated circles in Europe. 
In America nobody seemed to know there had ever lived such 
a man as Cornelius. Unless the history of fine arts, and their 
relation to the general history of civilization is taught in our 
colleges, this deficiency in the education of the cultivated 
classes will continue ; educated Americans abroad will con- 
tinue to appear ignorant of the first elements of culture ; one 
great branch of the stream of civilization will flow away from 
us ; our knowledge of historical and contemporary art will con- 
tinue to be borrowed ; and one third of our knowledge of his- 
tory will be a blank, or a mixture of crude and detached data,. 



1867.] Esthetics in Collegiate Education. 589 

For the study of the history of the fine arts and their rela- 
tion to the general history of civilization^ text-books for class 
recitation are needed. Of such we have no trustworthy ones 
in this country. Till these are given, instruction must be 
given by lectures from the professor. These should be extended 
through about half of the last year of collegiate instruction. 
More, the other branches of study would not admit. As much 
time as this is given to astronomy, for example, or many other 
studies not more important for the development of the mind, 
tod its furnishing with useful information, than the subject of 
which we are treating. 

These lectures on the history of art should be supplemented 
by museums of archseology and art history. Such museums are 
attached to many universities of the old country. The great 
royal museum of Berlin is now used as an appendage to the 
university for the illustration of the lectures of the professors 
upon the history of the fine arts. It is possible to procure a 
Yery acceptable museum to illustrate the characteristic periods 
of architecture, sculpture, and painting among all peoples and 
of all ages, at a moderate outlay, at much less than is ap- 
propriated to the gathering of cabinets of mineralogy, geology, 
or zoology, or in the apparatus to illustrate physics and 
chemistry. The laws that govern the crystallization of form- 
less matter, that have governed the developments of animal 
and vegetable life in the geologic and present periods of the 
history of the earth, are extremely interesting, and justly 
require illustration by extensive cabinets and apparatus. Are 
the laws that have attended the development of humanity in 
history, are the finest workings of the human spirit, the noblest 
productions of human genius, of less interest ? And is money 
misappropriated in gathering museums to illustrate these laws, 
to reproduce these works of genius, so that they may be en- 
joyed again hundreds and thousands of years after their 
authors have gone to their last sleep ? 

A well selected museum of archaeology and art history would 
have as its foundation casts in plaster of Paris of the chief 
works of sculpture, and of the chief architectural ornaments 
of the different ages of sculpture and architecture. It is im- 
possible now to get good original works of any historic artist 
of past periods. Copies in plaster are perfect reproductions. 



I 



590 Our Ministry, [October, 

They have none of the defaing and discoloring of the 
weather-worn originals, and thus for the purpose of study are 
letter than the originals. They cost far less and are far more 
true than copies in marble. At the outset, a few copies in 
plaster can be obtained. These can be supplemented by 
photographs of others. These photographs reproduce all the 
effects of the original from a single point of view. Of many 
fine works of sculpture no casts have been taken, and we must 
as yet be content with photographs of them. Most works of 
architecture must be examined by means of photographs and 
engravings. The only other or better metliod is by the use of 
cork models of buildings, and these are expensive. The study 
of the history of painting offers more diflSculties. Painted 
copies are expensive and are usually poor. Photographs and 
engravings give the outline, the drawing, the shading, 
and the composition, but they lack color, a vital element in 
painting. Still it is better beyond comparison to have the 
advantage to be gained from photographs and engravings than 
to know nothing of the history of painting. 

Thus, by the additon of the theoretical, practical, and 
historical study of the fine arts, by a placing esthetics and 
the fine arts on a level with philosophy and science, and with 
theology and morals, by the symmetrical development of the 
trinity in our spiritual nature — the good, the true, and the 
beautiful — we will have a system of education that will devel- 
op a symmetry and perfection of culture and civilization that 
has been attained in no past age. 



APPENDIX, 



To discuss at length the methods of instruction appropriate 
in a college, and the organization of a museum of art history 
— the works to be selected, their arrangement in an appropriate 
suite of rooms, and the best places and ways of procuring 
them — would have exceeded the limits of a single review 
article. Each of these two subjects requires, in fact, separate 
treatment. 

We will, however, take the liberty to state in a few lines, by 
way of example, how far the authorities of Allegheny College 
have deemed it feasible at present to incorporate the views of 
the foregoing article in the curriculum of study. What is here 
4one would not indeed have satisfied Plato or Pericles, Leo- 
nardo or Winckelmann, nor the modern schools of European 
archgeologists and art critics ; but it is, perhaps, as much as it is 
at present desirable to attempt in an American college. Per- 
haps other colleges may see their way to make even further 
advancement. 

In the scientific course — termed in some colleges the modern 
course, and which is here made equal in length and rigidness 
to the classical course — practical instruction is given during 
the Freshman year in free-hand drawing; during the 
Sophomore year, in mechanical, architectural and topograph- 
ical drawing; during the Junior year, in perspective draw- 
ing, and painting in oil and water-colors. Three hours a 
week are devoted to this practical part of the instruction. The 
students of both the classical and the scientific course attend 
weekly lectures upon Esthetics during the first term of the 
Senior year, and upon the history of the fine arts (ar- 
chitecture, sculpture, painting, and music) during the second 
and third terms of the Senior year. 



592 Appendix. 

The following from the catalogue indicates what has been 
done, with limited means, toward commencing a musemn of 
art history and archaeology. 

"MUSEUM OF ART HISTORY. 

^' A commencement had been made in the formation of a museum 
to illustrate the history of the fine arts. At present the collec- 
tion contains sixty casts of works of sculpture, two hundred 
photographs, and the same number of engravings. They are so 
selected as to represent charactenstic features of the different 
periods of the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting. 

" Among the casts are : 

The Apollo Belvidere Original in the Vatican, Rome. 

Niobe Original in the Uffizi Gallerj-, Florence. 

Yenus of Milo Original in the Louvre, Paris. 

Polyhymnia and Ancyrrhoe Originals in the Royal Museum, Berlin. 

The Apostles Peter, Paul, and James, by Peter Vischer. 

Originals in St. Sibaldus Church, Nuremberg. 

The Nuremberg Nun Original in Nuremberg. 

Moses, by Michael Angelo Original in Rome. 

The Statue of Handel, by Heydel Original in Leipsia 

The Statue of Lessing, by Thiersch Original in Brunswick. 

Morning, by Thorwaldsen Original in Copenhagen. 

Evening, by Thorvi^aldsen Original in Copenhagen. 

Bacchus and Cupid, by Thorwaldsen Original in Copenhagen. 

Busts of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle, Aristophanes and Menander, Goethe, 
Schiller, and various Egyptian, Grecian, and medieval bass-reliefs, tomb-stones.^ 
and architectural ornaments. V 

" The Royal Museum of Berlin has also presented to Allegheny- 
College casts of the celebrated statue of Diana Colonna, busts of 
Alexander the Great and Julius Ca?sar, the AVackenroder me- 
morial, German and Roman huts, casts of Indian and Assyrian 
sculpture, and a fine collection of original German and Classical 
antiquities, consisting of German stone hammers, battle-axes, 
drinking vessels, and Greek and Etruscan vases and lamps. 

" Two large Chinese, and one Japanese painting, have been pre- 
sented to the museum by Rev. Dr. Loomis. 

''Rev. Mr. Long, Missionary to Bulgaria, has presented some 
terra cottas and coins from Ephesus. 

"Friends and patrons of the college, traveling abroad, arc 
invited to add to this nmsoum works of art of any kind, but 
especially photographs of historical works of architecture, or 
original antiquities of any nation. Copies of the works of native 



A^endix. 593 

artists, memorials of the late war, or any articles to illustrate the 
history of the Indian or European races on this continent, will be 
carefully preserved. The names of the donors will be attached to 
all articles thus presented." 



^ 



The history of classical antiquity and of ancient mythology, 
as traced in their monuments, is not less important than that 
developed from the writings of authors. The monuments 
supplement the writings ; and especially by the aid of inscrip- 
tions, they give us nearly all that is known of some entire 
nations. 

Not less important to the student of theology is the light 
thrown by monuments upon the public and private life of the 
early Christians, and the development of faith and doctrine 
from the days of the apostles to the present time. A theo- 
logical seminary is not complete in its appointments without a 
museum of Christian art and archaeology, and a professorship 
in this department. 

Instruction should also be given in the general subject of 
Esthetics, and its application in the arts of rhetoric, oratory, 
music, and architecture, as well as in the practice of church 
music, and in the constructive laws of ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture. 



m. II. m 



VviU 



r 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 726 964 9 



